Image Quality concerns

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sandf320

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HI All,

Am new to the forum, and to Lightroom and have an overall query.

In short I used to use PS bridge and recently changed over to Lightroom on advice from another photographer. The Hud looks good and seems a great application for workflow. However the results I get with actual image quality do not seem correct.

The problem I am having is that I am trying to do all my colour correction, sharpening etc in Lightroom and then finishing off in PS2, but when I export the final tweaked image into PS2 (as a 16bit tif) for some unknown reason the image looks like a watercolour in certain areas (especially out of focus backgrounds). Does anyone else experience this? Is this maybe due to the levels I am using with Saturation or Sharpening? Is it the way it interpretes Noise/ISO...???? I have now tried it direct in PS2 and the results seem much better. Perhaps there is a control that is on, that I can switch off???

When I import an image into Lightroom, it "AUTO" adds levels in the "black" "shaperning", "vignette", "contrast" and "brightness" fields.. is this something to do with it? Can these be switched off as a pre-set?

For reference, I use a canon 1DmkII, so would this affect the way lightroom interpretes the raw file? I.e does LR work better with certain formats of RAW?

Would be thankful if someone can shed some light on this for me...

Thanks
 
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HI Steve

Thanks for getting back to me. I have since (posting this thread) looked on the adobe forum and several people there also seem to have the same issues.

Basically it would seem that when you import a image, Lightroom automatically "smoothes" (for want of a better word) some of the noise it finds inthe image, especially one that is iso 2'' and up. This sometimes is no doubt a good thing, but generally speaking, based on results, when you view the image 1:1 there is a considerable amount of this smoothing that make the image look like a watercolour... a sort of illustartive smoothing, which when working on Grizzly bears for example, makes them look terrible.

Basically the auto settings when you import are i.e Sharpening 25, Brightness 5' etc etc. I have also since exported the images with "'" in every field and taken them in PS and worked the Hue, Sharpen etc in there and they look a lot better, but still, Lightroom was created to avoid so much PS time.

What do you think? here's a link to what someone else said:

http://forum.adobe.com/webx/.3bc44a''

thanks Steve

Frank
 
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The image quality should be the same since LR and ACR use the same RAW processing engine. Are you sharpening inside PS, or sharpening with ACR?

There have been some recent improvements in noise and sharpening with the updates to Lightroom. What version are you using?
 
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HI steve

I am using 1.1, but just this moment updated to 1.2.

The first time I tried the image, it was within Lightroom. Shaprening was set to about 25, Saturation was boosted but only minimally.

The overall issue is not really "sharpening:, but more so the fact that this "watercolour" effect seems to occur ascross the board.

I have now tried around 4' images and none look sharp or detailed. Then when you add sharpening, it just makes them look worse as I'm technically sharpening what has already been smoothed by the programme.

Did you check the link I included in my previous reply? That guy explained it so much better than me... here's what he found...

*********
I use a Canon 5D, and while I'm accustomed to slightly higher levels of chroma noise, images up to ISO 16'' in even the worse lighting are always full of fine detail. Fine structures like strands of hair and eye lashes have now lost their delicacy, and have instead become coarse, unnaturally painterly analogs. Looking into shadow areas, I can see the results of what seems to be luminance noise smearing at work, obliterating noise and detail along with it. I never used Raw Shooter because I'm a Mac user (2x2GHz G5 w/2GB RAM and 25'GB HD), but if this is the result of incorporating Pixmantic's technology, the result is not a positive one from my standpoint. The images I shot yesterday are to be cropped to 4:5 proportions, then printed 2'" x 25", at which size the processing artifacts and lack of fine detail in these LR1.1 conversions becomes even more apparent. I've even tried turning off all image processing options: Clarity, Sharpening and NR (neither of which I ever use in RAW conversion, anyway)... It simply seems this noise smearing is part of the baseline RAW processing, and it really, really bites. Am I missing something? Is there some way to actually turn off this processing that looks uncomfortably like the "watercolor" noise reduction that Kodak and Panasonic use for their compact digicams. Yuck!

Secondly, is there a way to get back the suppression of hot and stuck pixels that LR used to perform? Now, my high ISO files are riddled with them, the same as they would be when converted with Aperture or Canon's DPP. Default suppression of hot and stuck pixels was a major advantage of LR/ACR, and contributed in no small bit to my adoption of LR as my standard tool for RAW conversion due to the amount of high ISO, low light photography I do. What's even worse, is that the random-color speckles are now smudged into the image along with all the other noise data that's being smoothed out, resulting in images that looks more like impressionist paintings than photographs.


Be good to hear your feedack on this. Thaqnks agian steve for taking the time to respond to this.

Frank
 
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Yes, I read the thread, and I get what your concerns are. Two questions:

Does the image look different when you use ACR to do the conversion vs. LR? Are you noticing improvements with LR 1.2?

Noise and sharpening have gotten better with each new release of LR, and it's definitely something Adobe has been putting more effort into.
 
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From the 1.2 ReadMe:

Noise reduction adjustment for all cameras with Bayer Pattern sensor: The base point noise reduction applied at the
demosaic stage of raw processing has been reduced. The resulting effect is that images with zero luminance noise
reduction applied in Lightroom 1.2 will contain more noise than the identical settings in Lightroom 1.1 but less noise
than identical settings in Lightroom 1.'.
 
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HI Steve

well, am in 1.2 now and have exported a couple out, which actually appear to be fine. However any images that have noise levels (of something shot over 2'' ISO) still seem to have this unusual watercolouring in just certain areas.

Sharpening wise, if I sharpen the image, I will just be sharpening a smoothed colour rather than detail.

I wish I could somehow send you a snap shot of how it looks, it would probably make more sense.

Frank
 
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